Potential Mishap

To recap, this is my second brew. Everything has been going great. I am brewing an IPA which spent 10 days in a primary bucket. When I was finishing racking to my secondary carboy I unintentionally pushed the rubber stopper with the airlock in it too far down. It has a tight seal on it but I am afraid there is no way I can pull the airlock out without the rubber stopper falling in the beer. I did soak the rubber stopper and airlock in idophor for plenty of time so I know it was sanitized when it went in. I am hoping I can rack to my bottling bucket before it has a chance to contaminate. Second question, how the hell can I get the rubber stopper out of the glass carboy?

Thanks,

Scott

Nothing will happen. The alcohol in the beer and the fact that it was sterile will see to that.

As for getting it back out. a big stick with bluetack on the end?

Check out the angle of the airlock on the barrel to the right. Silicon sealed it drunk one night after I pushed the o-ring into the barrel.

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This exact thing happened to me on my first brew. I taped a piece of cardboard down over the whole and poked the airlock through, no problems only one or 2 bottles left now. I miss that batch first one is always special.
I just waited until I racked it and then washed it off.

I've managed to remove a stopper from a carboy with an unwound coat-hanger. As I recall I had to thread the hanger through the stopper and do a kind of sideways pulling thing until it was grabable. It only took me, oh, 5 or 6 hours.

Actually it wasn't all that hard--but it was kind of a small stopper (which explains how it got pushed in in the first place. It only took me about a half hour of trying.

I did this on my 2nd batch of Meade. Only in a 1 Gallon jug. I frantically sterilized another carboy and poured the meade from the 1st into that.

I tasted it the other day and it's still young but not too bad. I ended up breaking the carboy while trying to retrieve the stopper though. It may just be worth looking into the Better Beer carboy at this point for you. I know I wish I had found that before i bought my 5 Gal glass carboy.

Best of luck.

At least it was only your 2nd brew, something like that happened to me after dozens were under the belt! No rubber flavors or any other weird funk was evident in the finished brew, for what it's worth.

I am considering chucking a handful of the little blighters in my next brew just for fun!

I actually had the stopper fall in the primary on my 1st IPA. Nothing bad happened.

I think dibby might be on to something, especially if you throw the stoppers in to a glass primary. I could sit and watch them rise and fall on the bubbles all day. Kinda like watching the washing machine.

How about some plastic frogs? just sterilise them first and in they go! Maybe even benifit the beer somehow - stir aid?

I had a too-small stopper get sucked into a trub one time. I was in the process of harvesting the yeast, so, at least it didn't go into the beer. Anyway, I freaked out, because I'd never had that happen before. But what I did was, I took a coat hanger and bent it so that it was like a pair of tongs. Then I bent the end of each "tong" back 180 degrees, like hooks, facing each other. I stuck the end into the carboy neck, turned the carboy upside down so that the bung dropped into the neck, and grabbed the bung with the two "hooks" of the tongs. Took about 3 tries, but it worked.

Maybe put a washcloth halfway into the neck of the carboy, shake the stopper onto the cloth then yank the cloth out of the carboy? Could work

LHBS showed me this. Didn't buy it, yet. Beer is still sitting on it conditioning. We'll see how the hanger method goes first.

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